XMinks

Chelsea xMinks Sandy (born January 25, 1992) is a popular YouTuber and Twitch streamer known for her competitive Call of Duty gameplay.

Biography
xMinks is an Australian gamer who has played Call of Duty professionally and competed at events like EB Expo, Gamescom and the Call of Duty World Championships. She is a popular Twitch streamer and YouTuber, surpassing 50,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel in February 2016.

She completed her Bachelor of Pharmacy at University of South Australia. She chose to not pursue this because at the time she'd rather be streaming full time. Before streaming full time (Nov 2014) she worked part time at a pharmacy as a Dispensary Technician while completing her degree.

Clothes Line
Get Hyped Apparel is the official clothing line of xMinks. As of April 2016 there are only a few pieces available, including two hoodies, a t-shirt and a sports cap. The clothing line has an associated Twitter account for promotional purposes.

Community
Back in 2015, The Sydney Herald did a piece on male treatment of female gamers in online competitive gameplay, namely speaking about xMinks's experiences in competitive gampeplay, given her high skill and high popularity. "People know who I am and when I get into a game with them, I get a lot of hate from them. Mainly around how I look. Being beaten by a female, I guess they kind of feel like they need to compensate somewhere," she said. "Maybe something inside them gets a little mad and they have to let it out in some shape or form." The article cited a very conclusive study showing that female gamers received considerably more flak than male gamers, from male gamers in particular. Over the years she'd been playing online, xMinks said things had improved. She puts it down to the increased visibility of women in the gaming space, with the growth of video platforms like YouTube and streaming service Twitch.

She further spoke about this issue to the Telegraph, as part of a piece on the rise of professional video gaming: 'I have a very strong belief that girls should be treated in the same way as males in the gaming industry,’ Mink told me via email. 'However, there seems to be a lot of animosity towards female streamers and a stronger weight on what you look like. 'People are very quick to judge what you’re about and how skilled you are by your looks. Sadly this is reflected quite a bit in my stream chat. But I’m doing this because it’s something that I really enjoy and I try not to focus on the negative comments as they are far outweighed by the positive ones.’

PC Specs/Hardware
Current PC Specs as of April 2016.

PC

 * Fractal R4 Case
 * i7 3930K
 * ASUS P9X79 Motherboard
 * GTX 660Ti GPU
 * 32 GB RAM

Monitors

 * BenQ EW2730V (far left monitor)
 * BenQ XL2420Z (2014) (left middle monitor)
 * BenQ XL2430T (2014) (right middle monitor)
 * BenQ XL2420T (2012) (far right monitor)

Consoles

 * Xbox One
 * PlayStation 4
 * Xbox 360

Peripherals

 * Corsair K95 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard
 * Steel Series Sensei Mouse

Multimedia

 * Blue Yeti Microphone
 * Edifier - Luna Eclipse Speakers
 * 2 x Logtitech HD Pro Webcam C920
 * Avermedia Live Gamer HD Capture Card

Events Attended

 * PAX Melbourne 2013


 * EB Expo 2013 Sydney


 * Australian & New Zealand Call of Duty Championship Sydney - March 2014


 * Gamescom 2014 Cologne, Germany


 * EB Expo 2014 Sydney


 * Asia Pacific Call of Duty Champs Regional Qualifier 2015


 * Call of Duty World Championships 2015 Los Angeles


 * X Games 2015, Austin, TX


 * MLG Season 3 Relegation, Columbus, OH (Analysis Desk)


 * E3 2015, LA


 * TwitchCon 2015, San Fransisco, CA

Trivia

 * She has stated that she is inspired by fellow gamer Justine Ezarik, also known as iJustine.


 * She has been interviewed about her experiences as a female professional gamer by publications like Dexerto and The Sydney Morning Herald.